Skip to content

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

— Samuel Smiles Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859)

Another quote →

Topics

Failure

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Thrift (1875)

"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience.

Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859)

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic (1987)

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

In business affairs, it is the manner in which even small matters are transacted that often decides man for or against you.

All Samuel Smiles quotes →

You may also like

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.

Muhammad

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.

Al-Tirmidhi

A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.

George Orwell The Prevention of Literature (1946)

Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.

James Cameron

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Smiles (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.